Doctor Smith
by blipblopblork
Summary: The Tenth Doctor regenerates.  AU assuming that the end of series 4 and onwards never happened and he died some other unspecified way  technically, ignores 'Fathers Day' too, though that isn't too important .  Mentions of DRose.


Somewhere in the back of his mind, this had always been the plan. He hadn't even known it, really, but ever since that fateful day at Canary Wharf - Doomsday, as the popular media had come to call it, not that the Doctor spent much time sitting around watching the telly - but ever since that day, the Doctor had been patiently waiting for the day when he would be forced to regenerate again, and with that new body would come both an opportunity and a curse.

He was tempted to blame the Captain Jack Harkness for the idea - good ol' Jack, the shifty ex-con man turned immortal force for the good of all humanity - wasn't every day you came across a bloke like that. But he knew it wasn't Jack's fault - he couldn't even blame Jack for planting the seeds, really, telling him how he'd gone back to visit Rose - watch her growing up from afar. It wasn't like he hadn't thought of that before. But he knew it would be too painful, that he wouldn't be able to stop himself from calling out to her - from running towards her and screaming out those words that he'd never had the chance to say... but to her, to his Rose, he knew he'd look to be nothing more than a madman in a fancy coat. And besides, who was he kidding? He'd had plenty of chances to tell her, before Canary Wharf and Dårlig Ulv Stranden, if only he hadn't fallen prey to the curse of the Time Lords - believing that there would always be more time.

And so he had waited. Not idly biding his time, no - not him, not the Doctor. He had continued living - living, and travelling, and saving lives as was his way. He knew it was what she would have wanted - did still want, after all, she was still out there somewhere across time and space, living not in one universe but in two. How many people could say they had done that? And now his time had come - it was time for this body to expire, and to be replaced with something new, something fresh. But most importantly, someone Rose had never seen before. The plan was simple - travel back to Rose's past and finally see her again (though it wouldn't be again for her, he supposed.), but not as the Doctor, not this time. To Rose, he would simply be John Smith.

The Doctor gripped the walls of the TARDIS tightly as the transformation began to take hold. A golden glow began to emanate from his pale skin, seeping out of every pore. The TARDIS seemed to shake violently, and the brightness of a thousand suns seemed to dance before his eyes. The pain of the process coursed through his body, and he cried out to the empty air - scream slicing through the silence of the TARDIS. And then just as quickly as it had begun, it was done. The transformation was complete.

Panting and out of breath, the Doctor curiously began to inspect his new body. He shifted his weight from side to side - he was shorter, studier but not stocky - and looked down at his hands...

"Ohhh, that's new. I didn't know I could do that." He spoke in a voice that was deeper and more clipped than his previous speech.

His hands, and the rest of him, it seemed, were a rich brown color - a sharp contrast to the pale white body that had once been.

"Guess I'm definitely not a ginger this time round, then." He shrugged to himself, taking in the feeling of new muscles acting under his command. "Can you believe it? Over ten different bodies and I still haven't been a ginger! Well, I'd best be fetching a mirror then. Can't wait to see this brand new mug of mine!"

The Doctor wasted no time in finding a mirror - ransacking a few of the TARDIS's many cupboards in the search. He found one quickly enough, and then cast a quizzical glance toward the ground as a small object tumbled out behind it. He picked it up to inspect it, pressing his fingers into the ornate grooves and indentations.

"Ah, I haven't seen this watch in ages! I'd wondered where you'd got to."

And then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught his first glimpse of his new form in the mirror. But it wasn't his first glimpse, not really - he had seen those dark eyes, that closely cropped black hair, and that stupid grin that wasn't really all that stupid if you gave it a chance - he had seen them all before.

"Oh." In that moment, there was understanding, as he looked from the fob watch to the mirror and back again. He knew what he had to do - what, depending on how you looked at it - or rather, from when, he had technically already done. After all, this had always been the plan. And so, as lowered the Chameleon Arch down over his head for the second time in his nine hundred odd years, he smiled to his new visage in the mirror as he spoke his last words as a Time Lord.

"Hmm, you don't really look like a John. You look more like a Ricky..." he blinked a few times at his reflection, "Eh, but I suppose Mickey suits you too." 


End file.
